Splash Damage Blog

Community Question: Friendly Fire

Submitted by badman on Thu, 12/08/2011 - 10:44

Community, today we'd like to get your thoughts and opinions on friendly fire. Is it a must-have for achieving the ultimate level of tactical depth? Or is it a bottomless source of griefing and frustration thanks to teammates that appear to do everything in their power to always end up in your line of fire? We must know.

Hence, this week's community question is as follows:

What is your preferred friendly fire setting and why?

Please cast your vote in our latest Community Question poll and hurl any comments you might have about the advantages and disadvantages of friendly fire at us in your replies.

39 Comments

Depends on game, and number of players per match. Anything over 24 players needs friendly fire off. Also when it is on, friendly players need to be easily discernable from foe. With a punishment for tk's. Battlefield is an example of a game that needs friendly fire off. At the start of the beta when ff was on, people got instantly tked when they spawned on their team, as their teammates got suprised and couldnt see the friendly indicator when they were so close, so just mowed them down. Games like etqw need ff on, as it is easy to tell who is on your team, and promotes smart play and not just spam everywhere.

I can't imagine playing any game with friendly fire off. It's one of the first things I set in the filters.
As I play medic nine times out of ten its useful to be able to TK revive, assuming the player won't complain or tap out.

Friendly fire gives more depth. Anyone can play in an environment where they can non-discriminatory hit any target. However, when there's also targets that need to be avoided you add an entire new layer to the game. For example players who make bold moves and jump into enemy groups can stand a chance because the surrounding opponents risk friendly fire on each other.

Or is it a bottomless source of griefing and frustration thanks to teammates that appear to do everything in their power to always end up in your line of fire?

You need a more elegant penalising system for that. Give the duped player some way of retribution as well as an automatic penalising system that's also context sensitive. If one of the four kills with that mini-gun spray is a team-kill then that is less bad than someone bleeding a team-mate in the spawning area. That bounced grenade team kill is way less bad than an accurate three-hit headshot on someone doing the objective (and would certainly prevent you from gaining any reward for doing the objective yourself).

On PS3, we always played friendly fire on. Most of the people in the chatroom games, including myself, wouldn't have it any other way...though the Big Teams chatroom liked FF off I believe. I became very accustomed to holding my fire when there were friendly bodies in front of me... to the point that I naturally held my fire in FF off games as well.
On PC, I find it hard to find a game with friendly fire on. I once played on a server with it enabled, and someone said that it was idiotic and Brink should never have friendly fire on. I've gotten very used to FF off in recent months, and I would have to relearn how to play with FF on at this point.. But trust me, it works very well when you get used to it.
Though I like FF on, but there should always be an option. That goes for consoles too. PC goes without saying, but even for consoles, you should allow people to customize everything in a match from what weapons and abilities are allowed, to bomb detonation times, to friendly fire, etc....then you need a match browser so that games with custom rules can be popularized, and not only played by people on your friends list.

Always on, but admin configurable.
I never had a problem with friendly fire or team kills in Quake Wars except for once or twice. A complaint system made it easy to kick someone who was obviously griefing.
Team kills occasionally created some comical deaths that were obviously accidental. Firing a clip into a friendly without doing damage also breaks immersion imo.

PC - There's one alternative missing: Let server admin decide. What's wrong with good old cvar g_friendlyfire ?
Personally I prefer FF on, since it tends to keep players a bit more team aware, as along as you have active admins and/or an automatic warning/kick system.
But I'm all for keeping options open. Makes it easier for each clan/community to niche their own server.
And we could easily change depending on whats needed for a closed match or public.

Always on, but optional via server config is best!
It's good for new players that shot everything that moves to turn it off.
Also a kickvoting ability would be nice to kick the people that troll or teambleed.
In addition to that, I disagree with lakersforce because of rifle nades and grenades in ET.

For ETQW, I would only play on servers where FF was on. Although there were some griefers, they could usually be taken care of by admins, and FF increases the need for intelligent tactics.
A good feature to include in any future game that has FF, would be some sort of warning (perhaps like the "combat intuition" in Brink) but only for friendy-fire. So you'd be warned that you'd just stepped in front of the cross hairs of a team mate.

To enjoy playing a game Friendly Fire is a must. It is so lame and unfair to the enemy if my team can walk over my landmines and not set them off or advance on the enemy while my artillery or airstrike is clearing the area. Besides we are playing on a present day battlefield or a WWII battlefield and there is no weapon that can tell the difference between the enemy and your team.

I am red/green colourblind, and I find it really difficult to differentiate between teams. Especially at long distance, before the outlines get drawn.So FF just makes the problem much worse.
If the developers read this: is there any way you could add an indicator of who's who, like the triangles above the heads in Enemy Territory? It's not an uncommon problem - it's about 1% of the male population that are colourblind.
Thanks

Thought you could change the colour?
On all the time please.
I remember in ET with some servers that had it off, teams would nade their engineers over the walls and stuff to win early, can grief just as much with FF off, just in different ways.

My choice was:
Always on (both in public and clan matches)
The reason why I picked up it was because I love ETpro because it has Friendly Fire enabled always
and there is nothing better to make team kills,healing teammates and getting kicked for team killing.
So I would like to see same thing in new Splashdamage game or update for game...
Good luck!:)

Voted for: Off in public matches and on in clan matches
I personally don't matter if it's on in public matches as well. But it totally depends on how many players can be in a game. For instance more then 30 players in a small environment (goldrush for example) with friendly fire enabled would be a big teamkilling fest. Especially with mortars/arties/airstrikes/mines/riflenades/panzer/disguised cvops.
But I think it should be a server side option, just like ET, were you could vote for FF to be enabled/disabled.

If the developers read this: is there any way you could add an indicator of who's who, like the triangles above the heads in Enemy Territory? It's not an uncommon problem - it's about 1% of the male population that are colourblind.

Mac, our UI Programmer, happens to be colourblind. So we're now extra sensitive to this issue!

I always had this addiction "trigger happy", struggled for many years until i found this miracle medicine "FF On" and his counterpart "kickvote for multiple tk".
I have been cured, Thank You "Friendly Fire ON" for giving me back my health! :D

Allways on (+ option for server admin)
Ofc that depends on the kind of game, I guess we are talking about an ETish game here, if you have a game like CoD where you don't have a medic and can control a flying battleship it's a bit different.

Always on, but admin configurable.
I never had a problem with friendly fire or team kills in Quake Wars except for once or twice. A complaint system made it easy to kick someone who was obviously griefing.
Team kills occasionally created some comical deaths that were obviously accidental. Firing a clip into a friendly without doing damage also breaks immersion imo.

I vote for the option to be able turn it on/off, but I think it ought to be on all the time by default. If it should ever be turned off, then I might only find large pub environments suitable. If there's less than 10 people per team and not a ton of spam, then FF should be manageable. For the most part people just don't like the tards on their team in pubs who TK them with rockets/vehicles/grenades/etc. Otherwise FF is a very good mechanic to keep, and not because it's "realistic" lmao....

I am definitely a friendly fire ON kind of guy. It forces players to consider more options instead of just indiscriminately shooting at things. The most frustrating game experiences I had in games like ET is when Friendly Fire is off, and it was impossible to get by Arty/Flamer/Grenade spam with no penalty to the team doing it. I feel like it brings the level of competition down several notches.
FF = Always On Forever

Too many variables for the poll to cover the necessary options. If I HAVE to choose one option in the poll, I think "always off" and "off in public matches" are the most viable options, because friendly fire with randoms instead of coordinated teams is just a bad combination.
Realistically though, some weapons should have friendly fire and others shouldn't, and the specifics should vary between public and clan matches.
Persistent damaging effects shouldn't have friendly fire - using Brink as an example, turrets and caltrops. Adding Friendly Fire to those would ruin them.